Kathryn recommends “The Gamble,” an analysis of the 2012 election. The authors, John Sides and Lynn Vavreck, argue that the coverage of the day-to-day drama of the campaign provides little real information for voters.

About the blogger

Stephanie Curtis has produced events, daily news shows, documentaries, conferences and call-ins for MPR News. She also was among the pioneering producers who launched The Current. You can hear her discuss movies every Thursday on The Cube Critics.

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I like the Roundtable segments. They’re lively and often a lot more compelling than some of the Daily Circuit conversations. That having been said, I wish there had been someone in today’s ACA roundtable that had more of a centrist view (and no, having a professor in as the “moderate” doesn’t count).

From my perspective, even the discussion of the ACA in the context of the Continuing Resolution or Debt Ceiling battle essentially gives weight to the Republican argument that there are good reasons to tie the two together. The President has apparently decided that he is not going to tie the hands of future Presidents by allowing the minority party to hold the majority party hostage every time it’s time to pass a budget or increase the debt limit.

The argument from conservatives is that Obamacare is unpopular or it might kill jobs. Even assuming that is the case, there is no reason to tie its repeal to passing a budget or raising the debt. I agree with the President that this negotiating ploy has to be stopped now or it’s going to spiral into a nightmare of endless crisis, no matter who is in charge.

I disagreed with the vote during the Bush Administration to go into Iraq and it’s difficult to imagine a more important issue. But even given its importance, when a vote came up in Congress several weeks later to raise the debt level, none of the legislators on the losing side of that Iraq vote tried to use that as a way to hold up the Iraq war.

At the end of the day, no matter how important the issue might be, there are certain lines you don’t cross. Not because they won’t work, but because if you do, you run the risk of making Washington into a town of endless, partisan gridlock.